Tuesday, September 11, 2007

An Unlikely Place for Love

I've been listening to Josh Ritter's latest album lately (The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter) and I'm very much enjoying the song The Temptation of Adam. Maybe it's because compared to the rest of the album (which is quite different from his folk-rock ways) it more closely resembles his previous work, or maybe it's the unlikely juxtaposition of a story about love taking place in a place of war, but the song has really hooked me.

It's not often you hear anything about missile silos now a days never mind find a love song that takes place inside one. In fact, I would hazard to guess that a lot of younger listeners might not even know that much about the history of real missile silos during the cold war in the 1960's, a time fraught with tension. Missile silos were originally intended to carefully house the nation's nuclear weapons in time of war to protect them from a first strike by an enemy. As such, they were housed fairly deep underground as defense against being destroyed by an attack, and were designed to be self-sufficient in case of nuclear fallout.

Oh Marie if you would stay then we could stick pins in the mapOf all the places where you thought that love would be foundBut I would only need one pin to show where my heart's atIn a top secret location three hundred feet under the ground

All of the sites were decommissioned in the 60's, some after only being in operation for 4 years, and anything of value was removed. Since then, many have fallen into private hands, and you can actually buy them for your own use if you have enough money and technical skill to renovate them. While you're enjoying the song, poke around in the following sites to learn more about the history behind the song's setting:

Read and see the history of the development of missile silos at SiloWorld.